Near a year after the tourism minister’s pronouncement that the days
of sex in Thailand were coming to an end, we are now witnessing the
rise of a new phenomenon.

In fact it could be the biggest emerging trend in sex tourism to hit
these shores since the GI’s started collaborating with the Thais and
Mr Cowboy set up knocking shop in competition with Mr Patpong.

It’s what the antipodeans refer to as BYO – bring your own no less.
But while the Australians I believe were referring to a bottle of
plonk in their restaurants the new tourists, not content with just
“beg –packing”, are now bringing their own partners.

And putting on the show for the Thai public who are falling all over
themselves getting their phones out to record the latest PC incident –
public copulation that is.

First on a tuk-tuk in Phuket then in Samui – I expected to see some
more at it like rabbits in the Bangkok streets when out for a trip to
Tops with my four year old.

I was certainly fore-arming myself with a birds and the bees spiel
just in case and wondering if the new craze was going to put the
Bonkers well and truly back in Bankers. If it ever left….

It all reminded me of the Thai proverb of taking coconuts to sell in
the orchard.

And it took me back to the 1980s when tourism was really taking hold
and westerners were testing the nation’s tolerant waters unveiling
topless treats and peaches on the beaches.

Those were the days – the indignation from the Thais you were with!
Such shock horror that they would stand there for half an hour and
shamelessly gawk and tattle with their neighbor. Oh, where were mobile
phones then – if only we could have shared it in real time with our
pals on Facebook live.

Then our outrage would have been complete!

On Tuesday in an eventful week of news on Thaivisa I really thought
tourism minister Khun Kobkarn had got a bit frisky in straddling the
sex bandwagon.

Next to the latest public sex story – about a Spaniard – a headline
screamed: “TAT eyes attracting Chinese couples”.

Always with an eye out to make a tourist buck so long as it isn’t a
zero-buck, was she really suggesting that the Chinese come here for a
bit of “lumpty-tumpty” or a spot of “logering”?

Alas not. The elegant minister has not done a U-turn on her sex trade
tirade but was promoting Thailand as a great place for couplings of an
altogether more sober kind – weddings.

It was not mentioned if the authorities, after taking their money,
would then allow the nuptials to be consummated…..even if it was done
in the privacy of the five star hotels where I am sure these newlyweds
will be encouraged to bed down.

Anyway…enough of sex. It is making me “Google” eyed – not good when I
fear we might have another interruption in internet service. This week
3BB were quick to say the outage of said ‘Googern’ and YouTube was
none of their doing, even the juntas, but was all the fault of those
silly foreigners doing something very few Thais have even heard
of……namely maintenance.

“Karn raksaa saphaap” exists in Thai language, I just think it might
have been left out of the school textbooks. Perhaps it happened when
they were putting in all those pronouns to remind the population of
their exact place in society in case they ever forgot.

Setting a better example in the last seven days was the new head of
Chula students, freshman Netiwit. Though his name is vaguely
reminiscent of the idiots one sees online there is nothing foolish
about this young man unless standing up to the junta represents that.

Here we have a rare beast – a man elected over the heads of his peers
who is prepared to be both strong and sensible in his views. “The old
and the young people must talk and stop dominating” he said while two
men on a motorbike came looking for him.

This scared him as well it might.

One “I was in ‘nam” forum poster suggested he should “grow a pair”
clearly not appreciating that men on bikes often bring death with
them. Netiwit was the man responsible for bringing in the Hong Kong
political activist earlier in the year to speak at Chula, a man who
was turned away at Swampy.

Netiwit’s gonads were of a sufficient diameter to subsequently have
the activist deliver his speech via Skype.

Also sporting some excellent two veg to go with his meat was a Pit
bull dog in Nonthaburi that turned his dog loving owner into a pussy
after attacking both him and his son while seemingly defending his
daughter who had clearly raised the mutt.

The father said no more dogs for him while the posters of Thaivisa,
who fell into two camps, either advocated following the lead of some
Asian cultures in putting all dogs on the dinner table or advised that
all you have to do with dogs is tickle them under the chin and they
will roll over and cuddle you.

Rooster – who finds gerbils a bit scary – is not the canine crew’s
number one supporter.

Top Thai soap of the week was an absolute doozy – the story of the
bank staff who came to repossess a car two years behind on the
payments only to be threatened with a gun brandishing policeman who
drove off in the unpaid for Honda Jazz.

The wife went on national TV with the most ludicrous – ‘jing jing ler
kha’ – sob story about how it had all by some circuitous route somehow
led to her mother’s untimely demise.

One or two hardened forum posters were even taken in but Rooster felt
like smashing the TV especially when she had the gall to claim the
bank employees actually threatened her.

They counter sued but what was it that the cops in Kannayao said that
made everyone not “wai” but shake hands?

OK, so the gun toting rozzer could still get his knuckles wrapped and
do some inactive posting for a while but I really think the bank
should have insisted on going after both the wife and her husband.

Compromise is one thing but letting people get away virtually
scot-free with threats against your employees is quite another matter.
It was an own goal for Krung Thai – I shall think twice before opening
an account with you because if that is how you treat your employees I
am not sure I care to be a customer.

Also vying for soap opera status was the story of the marital and
child bearing shenanigans of David the US missionary who has left a
trail of wives and offspring in his wake across Asia.

Not surprisingly went off to work in Vietnam for a spell leaving his
third wife and three children subject to that greatest constabulary
oxymoron – a Pattaya police hunt.

Thaivisa posters had the proverbial field day wringing every drop of
innuendo from “missionary position” while Rooster was left to
pontificate on those who would come to Thailand to proselytize.

Those clean cut “Mormon” types who are seen from time to time in
Bangkok always give me a wide berth. Perhaps they are trained in
spotting militant atheists who are surreptitiously rolling a ball of
phlegm in their mouths in case it should be needed.

I once had the Jehovah’s Witnesses move in next door but fair play to
them; without any bidding from me they insulated the adjoining
townhouse so that only their god could hear their Sunday wailings and
not the neighbors.

Still, Friday put a lie to the oxymoron as the Pattaya cops found the
three “luuk khreung” in Hua Hin and banged up the missionary’s latest
‘mama mia’.

Decidedly inconsiderate of others, though perhaps not wholly in the
wrong, were the perpetrators of two of Thailand grisliest murders this
week.

The first involved the pensioner father who took an axe to his
good-for-nothing drunkard of a son who had threatened his gran with a
carving knife for not giving him booze money. It did appear that the
“thorapee” son was left to bleed to death at the foot of the stairs,
just in case.

Thorapee – always used in such Thai stories – refers to an ungrateful
buffalo of Ramakien (Ramayana) legend who turned on his father – a
folk story so engrained in the Thai psyche that dad may well be
released without ever going to court.

The other case seemed less cut and dried, if you’ll pardon the pun. In
Phitsanulok a man came home to find his wife about to be raped by a
man she had met on Facebook who she had invited round to look at her
husband’s cocks, fighting cocks that is, while he just so happened to
be out.

She had asked him round not once but three times.

Cock and bull came to mind but the husband – who shot the man dead in
his living room without apparently asking any questions – is another
who may escape jail due to what the Thais might see as fair play not
foul.

Just two Rooster awards this week and both are related closely to the
bombing outrage at Big C in Pattani. The “Are you from the Planet
Junta?” award goes to the dear general for asking that the press and
public not share the blast footage “for fear they would affect
people’s feelings”.

What a kind soul he is to think about others – not least the fifty
victims – and not even mention the economy and tourism at this sad
time

The explosion also led to my favorite forum comment of the week from
“Dobredin Ghusputin” who suggested on Big Too’s behalf that
“henceforth everybody please refer to bombings only as ‘sudden and
loud dissipations of energy’”.

Excellent! That should also help with people’s delicate feelings when
it comes to ‘the problems in the South’.

Finally, my favorite story of the week had to be the mistake in the
online poster advertising the movie “Dunkirk”.

The translator managed to turn one of my country’s “finest hours” into
just another disaster when “700 civilian boats came for them” somehow
came out as “only 700 of the 400,000 stranded soldiers returned”.

Many Thais spotted the error though I guess those who didn’t must have
been excited by the prospect of seeing a movie with all that gore and
violence as 399,300 “Tommies” were cut down in a hail of Luftwaffe
bullets.

This could lead to a whole new rewriting of history.

So long as no one suggests Geoff Hurst’s World Cup final goal didn’t
really cross the line.